


Nightmare

by callunavulgari



Series: Dark Month Collection [85]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: 31 Days Of Halloween, Dancing, Dreams and Nightmares, Fear, Loneliness, M/M, Spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 03:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21220076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: “All right,” he says, taking Jon’s still outstretched hand. “Let’s give the dream what it wants.”





	Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> Day 28 of October. Prompts were: Costume, ruins, injury, ritual, “while I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die,” light, and grave.
> 
> Written with the vague assumption that this will take place after the events of The Last, assuming that neither of the characters manage to die before Jon next falls asleep.

Afterwards, Jon dreams.

He dreams often, nowadays. Most of the time, he can’t recall them upon waking. They cling to him like a thin gauzy film, ever sustaining, an endless cycle of pain and suffering and fear.

This dream feels different. The dreamer, for once, appears to be him and him alone.

He is in the House of Wax museum again, only this time there are the high, soaring stained windows of a cathedral, the ceiling domed and covered with intricate paintings that seem to shift if he looks at them too long. He’s never been to the Sistine Chapel, but he’s seen enough depictions to know that Michael Angelo never touched this place. The imagery is a type of hell, for certain, but a type that Jon Sims recognizes. He sees the great gaping maw of the Flesh, the wild hounds of the Hunt, the grey emptiness of the Lonely before he has to force himself to look away. At the very center of the ceiling, there is a great eye, ever watching.

“Jon?” someone asks, and Jon blinks.

Martin is standing before him. He’s wearing something out of another time, a costume of silken breeches with a well-cut waistcoat of a rich, opalescent blue. There’s a puffy cravat hugging his neck, and polished buckled shoes on his feet. Jon almost expects him to be wearing a wig, but his hair is the one thing that’s been left untouched, hanging loose around his chin.

_“Martin?”_ Jon asks.

Martin seems to take him in, his eyes running slowly down Jon’s body, lingering at his wrists, his waist, his thighs. It’s a bold sort of move, one that Martin would never be half so blatant about if he were awake.

“You, er. Look nice,” Martin says, and Jon glances down at himself.

He’s sure that moments ago he’d been wearing the same thing he’d worn to the office, shabby coat, mostly clean shirt, a pair of nondescript trousers that didn’t have any stains. But now, he finds himself in a _dress_. The gown is long and brilliantly red, the skirts heavy around his thighs. There are embroidered patterns reminiscent of roses along the bodice and down the front of his petticoat.

“Well, shit,” he mutters, still staring. Experimentally, he moves his hips, and finds that the skirts _swish_ obligingly with the movement.

“Yes, well,” Martin murmurs, cheeks flushing horribly. “You always did look rather good in red.”

“In red-” Jon repeats in horror. “Martin, I’m in a _gown_.”

“And you look quite fetching,” Martin assures him, the red creeping down his neckline. “I, uh. Sorry. This is a really strange dream.”

Jon sighs, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Oh good, you’re dreaming, too. I don’t suppose that you’re even real?”

Martin cocks his head. “I… feel real?”

Jon groans. “Yes, well, you would say that, wouldn’t you. Look, just, come here. I think we’re supposed to dance.”

Martin frowns at him. “Should we really be giving the dream what it wants?”

Which… is a damn good point. But he’s found that dreams like this tend to have scripts. Disrupt them, and they’ll find someway to make things worse. Instead of a dress, he could be naked. Instead of a church, he could be in a place teeming with spiders.

Even as he thinks it, the dream shifts. The church melts away. The gorgeous windows crack and splinter, the walls crumble, the roof gives way on one side, revealing a fat, bloated moon and a starry night sky. The music, which he’d only half noticed, fades away entirely, and the dancers who had been whirling by in jeweled silks become ghostly apparitions, shades of solid mist that seem to glare as they pass by.

The ruins of the church are covered in thick cobwebs, and if he squints, he can see the scurrying of dark shapes at their centers.

He shudders, taking a quick step back. Martin is looking around himself, bewildered.

“All right,” he says, taking Jon’s still outstretched hand. “Let’s give the dream what it wants.”

Jon pulls him close, feeling his neck flush when Martin wraps an arm around his waist. He doesn’t really know how to dance particularly well, but Martin seems to know the steps, pulling him into something that Jon can only categorize as a waltz.

“This is weird,” Martin whispers, eyes tracking the ghosts that are whirling in tandem with them.

“Dreams are supposed to be weird,” Jon says back, but privately, he agrees. This isn’t the dreams that he’s used to. This isn’t the Beholding using him to spy on people’s nightmares. It isn’t even the ordinary strange like the dreams Jon would have before he was the Archivist. It’s just odd, with a lingering sense of unease at the core of it.

Perhaps they’d run into an artifact, and they’re about to come to some kind of gruesome end.

“I, um. Your hand is drifting, Jon.”

Jon blinks, and carefully moves his hand away from Martin’s hips. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Martin tells him, glancing away. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

And that- well, that’s not entirely true, is it? Jon may not be interested in sex, but he _is_ interested in touch. And after all of this, it’s become quite apparent that he is also interested in _Martin_. Maybe that’s what this dream is. Maybe it’s a normal dream, after all. Just his subconscious dealing with his feelings for Martin.

Somehow though, he doesn’t think so. This dream _feels_ too odd. It has the feel of a ritual, and Jon doesn’t know if that’s just the memory of the Unknowing or if somehow he’s managed to find his way into the midst of a ritual on accident.

Jon bites his lip, then makes his touch a bit firmer. A bit more there.

Martin looks at him, blinking in surprise.

“Jon?” he asks, sounding far away and strange. Jon clings to him tighter, because even as he watches, Martin begins to fade away. They are back in the grip of the Lonely again, and Martin is drifting, becoming more and more translucent the harder Jon clings.

And then he is gone, and Jon is in the dream alone again.

The ruins loom around him, the ghostly apparitions releasing a long sigh before they too begin to fade.

“Archivist,” a voice breathes behind him. A shiver goes through him, the hairs at the back of his neck beginning to prickle as gooseflesh sweeps over his entire body. The dress is gone. The shine of the dream is gone. Jon is alone, save for the figure materializing behind him.

The silhouette slowly takes shape, void taking form, and even as Jon watches, he realizes that he recognizes the figure. He sees it in the mirror every day.

“Jon,” the creature sing-songs. “Johnny boy.”

“What do you want?”

The creature with his face smiles. It is an exact copy, down to his scars. But instead of Jon’s eyes, it just has the one, huge and unblinking in the center of its face.

“What do I want?” it laughs. Jon is forcibly reminded of Michael, before he’d worn the skin of Helen. This thing, whatever it is, has the same eerie laugh. The same strange echo. “Oh, Jon. I want what I’ve always wanted.”

“And what is that?” Jon asks, edging backwards.

“You think that you’ve been learning how to live, Jon,” it tells him, shaking its head sadly. “While all along, you’ve been learning how to die.”

Jon swallows. “Have I?”

It laughs again, delighted. “Well, of _course_. You think that you’ve been fighting so hard. Really _trying_. But Jon, don’t you know yourself?”

Jon takes another step backwards, but this time, his foot doesn’t find ground. He trips, arms windmilling, and when he lands, he’s in a box. A strange, familiar box. Like a shipping container, or a coffin.

The creature with his face crouches above him, peering down. “Didn’t you know? You’re just another sacrifice. Just another thing for us to crunch between our teeth.”

“You’re-” Jon breathes, his chest pulling tight. He can’t fucking breathe, and the walls are closing in around him. The lid is shutting, and when there’s no light left, this coffin will become his grave.

“Dear Archivist,” the creature says, almost fondly. “I am _everything_. I am all of them. All of the shapes that your fear takes. I am your dreams and your nightmares. And someday, I will be the last face that you ever see.”

Jon takes another ragged breath.

“Nighty, night, Jon,” the creature says, waving.

The lid shuts.


End file.
